Clarity. Advocacy. Simplicity. Creativity. I like making connections. Not to confuse but to understand. From inspiring to amusing to unexpected. Between people, places, things. Ideas, beliefs, words. Events, issues, solutions. To explain. To enjoy. To grow. To advise. For fun, call me Garbl. I'm an acronym! Plus: You're welcome to comment too!

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Friday, February 22, 2013

We can’t end this without mentioning Raymond Chandler’s response when a copy editor at the Atlantic Monthly decided to “fix” his hard-boiled prose: “When I split an infinitive, God damn it, I split it so it will remain split.”

That's the conclusion of this article by Patricia T. O’Conner and Stewart Kellarman. But they begin with an oft-told story about Winston Churchill and his comment about ending a sentence with a preposition:

It’s a great story, but it’s a myth. And so is that so-called grammar rule about ending sentences with prepositions. If that previous sentence bugs you, by the way, you’ve bought into another myth. No, there’s nothing wrong with starting a sentence with a conjunction, either. ...

After noting another myth about splitting infinitives, O'Conner and Kellarman answer these questions:

Where did these phony rules originate, and why do they persist?

And then they add this advice:

As bloggers at Grammarphobia.com and former New York Times editors, we’ve seen otherwise reasonable, highly educated people turn their writing upside down to sidestep imaginary errors. There’s a simple test that usually exposes a phony rule of grammar: If it makes your English stilted and unnatural, it’s probably a fraud.

husband, wife Regardless of sexual orientation, husband or wife is acceptable in all references to individuals in any legally recognized marriage. Spouse or partner may be used if requested.

Explaining the new entry, Mike Oreskes, AP senior managing editor for U.S. news, said this in an AP news release:

The AP has never had a Stylebook entry on the question of the usage of husband and wife. All the previous conversation was in the absence of such a formal entry. This lays down clear and simple usage. After reviewing existing practice, we are formalizing 'husband, wife' as an entry.

Possibly adding some clarity, here's a related comment from an internal AP memo (for editors and reporters, I assume):

SAME-SEX COUPLES: We were asked how to report about same-sex couples who call themselves “husband” and “wife.” Our view is that such terms may be used in AP content if those involved have regularly used those terms (“Smith is survived by his husband, John Jones”) or in quotes attributed to them. Generally AP uses couples or partners to describe people in civil unions or same-sex marriages.

This Columbia Journalism Review article adds more background on this new entry: "AP’s first usage guidelines on ‘husband, wife.’"_______The AP news release and a related article are featured today, Feb. 22, in my daily online paper, Garbl's Style: Write Choices, available at the Editorial Style tab above. The AP release is also featured today in my daily online paper, Garbl's Plain English Paragraphs, available at the Plain Language tab. The CJR article is featured today in my daily online paper, Garbl's Good Cause Communications, available at the Nonprofit Communications tab.

I just came across this series by graphic designer Laurie Cosgrove and have skimmed a few of the articles in the series. But her introduction and the titles look intriguing for anyone interested in publication and Web design and style--and getting people to read them!

Cosgrove writes:

I decided to do this series after hearing the same things over and over from photographers I work with on a regular basis. It seems to be a common struggle - not just with photographers - but with a lot of small business owners.

She then gives several sample requests for help in developing a brand or design statement, including:

“I have no idea where to start.”“My style is all over the place.”

As I post this message, Cosgrove has reached Day 21 of the series. Here's the list of topics in the series; Cosgrove notes that she may revise it along the way:

Thursday, February 21, 2013

Referring to another article on how attorneys can cut client costs, Salzwedel writes in this article:

[T]he article ignored the most important way attorneys can save money for their firms and clients: by learning how to write in plain English.

But I must emphasize here: Learning how to write in plain English can save people money in all fields, not just in the law. Salzwedel's comments can be applied to people working in education, health, business, nonprofits and elsewhere.

Salzwedel writes (emphasis added):

Most attorneys don’t believe that writing style matters. They might concede that writing in plain English can be aesthetically pleasing to the reader; but they also say that it’s not worth the time to learn how to do it because there’s no evidence that writing in plain English saves time or money.

But these attorneys ignore what legal-writing experts have taught — and what the empirical evidence has shown — for more than 50 years: that plain English saves time and money by increasing the ability of readers to understand and retain what they have read.

Salzwedel continues his advocacy of clear, concise writing under these headings--with links to and citations of several writing authorities:

Plain English is Not a Newfangled Idea

Many Studies Show the Benefits of Plain English

Bad Legal Writing Can Be Fixed.

He concludes:

[W]ith the right tools and disciplined practice it is possible to write in plain English. So even if you hate to write, consider learning how to write in plain English an investment in happy clients and an improved bottom line.

__________Salzwedel's article is featured today, Feb. 21, in my day online paper, Garbl's Plain English Paragraphs, available at Plain Language tab above and by free email subscription.

As a long-time amateur musician (on guitar, piano and violin), I was immediately captured by the story and lessons learned at the start of this article. I'm taking private lessons on Celtic fiddle-playing and related her advice to my sometimes-frustrating learning process.But the blogger's article isn't just for musicians. Her advice also applies to other fields of study, work and play. Referring to a lesson learned from her piano teacher, the blogger writes:

I had thought that wrong notes came from being "bad at piano" or "not practicing hard enough," and if you practiced harder the clinkers would go away. But that's a myth.

In fact, wrong notes always have a cause. An immediate physical cause. Just before you play a wrong note, your fingers were in a position that made that wrong note inevitable. Fixing wrong notes isn't about "practicing harder" but about trying to unkink those systematically error-causing fingerings and hand motions.

She goes on to describe two models that people follow to correct their mistakes and improve at whatever they're doing. Relating her models to my fiddle-playing (and my current and past teachers' lessons), simply playing a piece over and over and over again doesn't correct my errors. Instead, only finding and working on the particular error(s) will improve my performance. I've heard a similar message in political debates: "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results." The blog author calls that first common method the "error model." People try to perfect their performance by reducing the number of random errors. She writes about that model:

Improvement is a matter of lowering your error rate. ... Your grade is based on the percent you get correct. Your performance is defined by a single continuous parameter, your accuracy.

But then she describes the "bug model" of errors. Jumping suddenly (but clearly) into the language of computer programming, she describes how to improve performance by finding the particular bug--or cause of mistakes--and then trying to correct that bug.She writes:

If your program has a bug, then you'll get a whole class of problems wrong, consistently. ... A bug gets everything that it affects wrong. And fixing bugs doesn't improve your performance in a continuous fashion; you can fix a "little" bug and immediately go from getting everything wrong to everything right. ...

Returning to her piano-playing analogy--and then relating it to learning math, the blogger writes:

Often, I think mistakes are more like bugs than errors. My clinkers weren't random; they were in specific places, because I had sub-optimal fingerings in those places. A kid who gets arithmetic questions wrong usually isn't getting them wrong at random; there's something missing in their understanding, like not getting the difference between multiplication and addition. ...

The rest of the article applies the blogger's lesson learned to her work and study in education; in particular, "special education" with students who have learning disabilities. She writes:

Maybe nobody's actually stupid. Maybe the distinction between "He's got a learning disability" and "He's just lousy at math" is a false one. Maybe everybody should think of themselves as having learning disabilities, in the sense that our areas of weakness need to be acknowledged, investigated, paid special attention, and debugged.

She concludes:

As a matter of self-improvement, I think it can make sense not to think in terms of "getting better" ("better at piano", "better at math," "better at organizing my time"). How are you going to get better until you figure out what's wrong with what you're already doing? It's really more an exploratory process -- where is the bug, and what can be done to dislodge it? ...

________The blogger's article was summarized today, Feb. 21, in an article in my daily online paper, Garbl's Creativity Connections, available at the Creativity tab above and by free email subscription.

Wednesday, February 20, 2013

The Feb. 20 edition of my daily online paper, Garbl's Plain English Paragraphs, features Scott's three-part series of downloadable infographics that provide 162 plain English words or phrases that editors prefer over their "wordy" equivalents.

Scott encourages people to save the images to their computers and post them anywhere, from websites to blogs to Pinterest pages.

This article, by Michael Michalko, author of Thinkertoys: A Handbook of Creative Thinking Techniques, describes the six things. A follow-up article describes the rest. (I'll link to it when it's available.)

Here's a summary of Michalko's ideas:

YOU ARE CREATIVE. ... Creative people believe they are creative. People who believe they are not creative, are not. Once you have a particular identity and set of beliefs about yourself, you become interested in seeking out the skills needed to express your identity and beliefs. This is why people who believe they are creative become creative. ...

CREATIVE THINKING IS WORK. You must have passion and the determination to immerse yourself in the process of creating new and different ideas. Then you must have patience to persevere against all adversity. ...

YOU MUST GO THROUGH THE MOTIONS. ... The more times you try to get ideas, the more active your brain becomes and the more creative you become. ...

YOUR BRAIN IS NOT A COMPUTER. Your brain is a dynamic system that evolves its patterns of activity rather than computes them like a computer. It thrives on the creative energy of feedback from experiences real or fictional. ...

THERE IS NO ONE RIGHT ANSWER. ... When trying to get ideas, do not censor or evaluate them as they occur. Nothing kills creativity faster than self-censorship of ideas while generating them. Think of all your ideas as possibilities and generate as many as you can before you decide which ones to select. ...

NEVER STOP WITH YOUR FIRST GOOD IDEA. Always strive to find a better one and continue until you have one that is still better. ...

________

Michalko's article is featured today, Feb. 20, in my daily online paper, Garbl's Good Cause Communications, available at the Nonprofit Communications tab above and by free email subscription.

Blogger Heather Sundell notes she was "a silly, self-involved twenty-something" who changed into "a socially conscious and responsible individual in just a year." And she did so by using Twitter.

She writes:

Prior to using Twitter for this purpose, I had mostly thought of the platform as a fun way to express mundane thoughts no one would have ever known about before this 140 character limit messaging platform. Little did I know that many other people used it as a genuine news source.

Sundell describes some steps she took and now recommends for using social media, especially Twitter, to become better informed. It's good advice for people who need a starting place.

Using social media, people can link to articles, websites, blogs, videos and so on to find much deeper, more thoughtful information and opinion than what's available in 140 characters in Twitter.Sundell writes:

I tested the water with Forbes, The Huffington Post, and even the Wall Street Journal. Pretty soon I was hooked on reading current events, and before I knew it, I was invested in the election.My social and political knowledge didn’t stop there. Twitter was just my gateway drug. ...

Of course, social media aren't the end point in that process. Responding to that information and opinion is the essential next step. Sundell doesn't say much about using social media to get more engaged; that is, to become an activist or advocate for whatever the cause, issue or concern raised in those social media links to other websites.

But that activism is possible using social media, and most advocacy groups make it easy to use it that way--as one method for getting your voice heard by decision-makers. Traditional methods also are essential--from writing letters to your representatives, not only signing online petitions, to calling and meeting with your representatives; from attending rallies and workshops to voting, of course!

_______

Sundell's article is featured today, Feb. 20, in my daily online paper, Garbl's Good Cause Communications, available at the Nonprofit Communications tab above and by free email subscription.

Don't work; play. ... Let the people working for you play, play, play. Don’t let them be overburdened by routine and mundane tasks. Build on their curiosity.

Seriously, that's some of the advice from comedian John Cleese in this article. Four other comedians also discuss how business leaders can enhance the creativity of their teams.

Labor management professor Bacharach introduces their comments in this way:

One group of professionals whose life’s passion is centered on creativity think you actually can foster it in an organization. That group is comedians, and they ought to know: After all, what demands more creativity than coming up with new routines week after week that make other people laugh?

Here are excerpts of advice from the four other comedians:

Ricky Gervais: Do something; anything ... Let your team create. Help it not to be afraid of failure or the pedigree of its creations. The simple act of creating will increase team members' confidence and expand their imagination.

Louis CK: Throw out your garbage ... Don’t let your team members rest on their laurels. Encourage them to throw out or rotate their ideas, no matter how creative they might have been at one time. Let them search for better answers, fixes, and solutions--even if there isn’t an immediate necessity.

Jerry Seinfeld: Think about Pop-Tarts for two years ... Don’t be fearful of the trivial. Sometimes creativity doesn’t begin with a brilliant idea; it starts with a simple observation. Encourage your team to observe and observe deeply. And remember, it may be a long process.

Woody Allen: Put your brilliant idea away ... Encourage your team members not torture an idea to death. If it doesn’t click right away, tell them to put it in a drawer. There will be time to come back to it.

Bacharach concludes:

As a leader, you set the tone. If you’re willing to give others the opportunity to play, explore, fail, throw out ideas, think about the mundane, take their time--and sometimes break the ice by telling a bad joke--then you will create an atmosphere that will stimulate new ideas, new processes, and new directions and take your company to new heights. No kidding.

________

Bacharach's article is featured today, Feb. 20, in my daily online paper, Garbl's Creativity Connections, available at the Creativity tab above and by free email subscription.

because, since Both words can be used to mean "for the reason that." Because is the stronger conjunction for pointing out a direct cause-effect relationship: They went to the concert because they had been given tickets. Since is milder in suggesting a cause-effect relationship: Since I love folk music, I went to the concert. When readers might confuse since with its meaning "from the time that," use because.

Myth: Never use since to mean because."There is a groundless notion current in both the lower schools and in the world of affairs that since has an exclusive reference to time and therefore cannot be used as a casual conjunction. ... No warrant exists for avoiding this usage, which goes back, beyond Chaucer, to Anglo-Saxon. ..." -- Wilson Follett, 1966

Though I think I'm realistic and practical about it, I'm an optimist and an idealist. I believe we can figure out ways to solve problems and achieve success in things we do individually. And I believe the same thing for our organizations, communities, states and nations.

But as this article emphasizes, it also takes hope. And that's true not just for nonprofit organizations and their websites but also for public and private organizations and other forms of communication.

I'm not an advocate for the simplistic motivational technique often used with young people: "You can be whatever you want to be." Certainly, we should be open-minded, imaginative and idealistic in thinking about what we want to accomplish--and what we encourage other people to do. Certainly we can and should train and prepare ourselves well for the professional, organizational, and personal goals we want to achieve. But the fact is that we are not often the decision-makers in, for example, the jobs we seek. And we are not often alone--or the single best alternative--for those choices.

That's partly what I mean by being realistic and practical. In setting goals, we must consider alternatives in how to achieve them and communicate about them. We must be flexible.

But we must have hope that we can successfully and effectively evaluate those alternatives, prepare for them, and achieve them. And we must have, emanate and inspire hope in communicating those alternatives, goals and achievements.

Hartstein describes the importance of hope:

First, hope establishes that the problem is solvable. ... Whatever the problem, a healthy dose of hope shows that the problem has a solution. A problem that appears unsolvable isn’t motivating. It’s daunting, overwhelming, and maybe even debilitating. Our job is to inspire visitors [and readers] to action, not dim their spirits and immobilize them with despair. Hope makes taking action seem worthwhile.

In addition, hope establishes your organization as a solver of the problem. Showcasing the hope your organization has demonstrates the idea that not only is this problem solvable, but you’re a significant player in the implementation of the solution. Positioning yourself in this way makes it much more likely that potential supporters will get involved with your organization. ...

He continues by describinghow to integratehope into a nonprofit website. But most of his advice applies as well to other forms of communication and other types of organizations.

_________

Bernstein's article is featured today, Feb. 19, in my daily online paper, Garbl's Good Cause Communications, available at the Nonprofit Communications tab above and by free email subscription.

This article begins with discussion of an attitude I've long accepted and advocated: Failure breeds success through the creativity it stimulates.

Or as I put it at my website:It's OK to make mistakes. That's why pencils have erasers. A pencil, which I call "The Ultimate Creativity Tool," sits at the top of all my site's pages. I also use that symbol of creativity in the name of my writing and editing service: Garbl's Pencil & Good Cause Communications.

Of course, for mistakes and that tool to lead to creative results, we must move beyond the mistakes, acknowledging them but fixing them by trying other solutions again and again.

Dossetti's article eventually focuses on school reform as an important issue that should achieve creative success by responding effectively to failures. But I want to highlight her early comments.

She writes:

In order to succeed at change, failure is not only inevitable; it’s necessary. Any successful change makes room for mistakes. To expect perfect execution from the inception of change dooms it to true, catastrophic failure. Imagine expecting a child to write only final drafts. It’s preposterous. So why do we expect schools to implement complex changes as if the final, perfect phase is the only one that matters? Failure is the part of the process.

Unfortunately, it is the fear [of] failure that also stymies entire systems. Let’s face it; failure is scary. It can be paralyzing. We forget that it is our mistakes that we learn from. Competency, even mediocrity, erases our understanding of how our missteps shaped our eventual successes.

And as she concludes her article:

We must realize that everyone who tries something new is bound to fail. Learning from that failure is the catalyst of change that will lead to success.

________

Dossetti's article is featured today, Feb. 19, in my online daily paper, Garbl's Good Cause Communications, available at the Nonprofit Communications tab above and by free email subscription.

Monday, February 18, 2013

I'm linking to this article to focus on a matter of editorial style relevant to this day on our calendar. There's a clue in the headline.

But without further ado, note Presidents Day above. Yes, that is the correct editorial style, with no apostrophe, commonly preferred by editorial style manuals. Or, as I put it in Garbl's Editorial Style Manual:

Presidents Day Not President's Day or Presidents' Day.Washington's Birthday Capitalize birthday when naming the official U.S. holiday, called Presidents Day by some states and organizations to also honor President Lincoln and other presidents. Washington was born on Feb. 22, but the legal federal holiday is the third Monday in February.

As a former journalism student, journalism instructor, and newspaper editor and reporter, I've long used the AP manual as my first reference. But I also use the Chicago manual, the Gregg Reference Manual, and Garner's Modern American Usage if I have questions not covered by AP.

_______

The Presidents Day article is featured today, Feb. 18, in my online daily paper, Garbl's Style: Write Choices, available at the Editorial Style tab above and by free email subscription.

One of the myths of creativity is that very few people are really creative. The truth is that everyone has great capacities but not everyone develops them. One of the problems is that too often our educational systems don’t enable students to develop their natural creative powers. Instead, they promote uniformity and standardization. The result is that we're draining people of their creative possibilities and, as this study reveals, producing a workforce that's conditioned to prioritize conformity over creativity.

Sir Ken Robinson, Ph.D., an internationally recognized leader in the development of education, creativity and innovation, made that comment in response (emphasis added) to the survey findings announced in this Adobe news release.

The following findings were placed last in the news release, without any heading highlighting them. Yet they point to needed steps, however vague, to reduce the creativity gap:

Four in 10 people believe that they do not have the tools or access to tools to create. Creative tools are perceived as the biggest driver to increase creativity (65% globally, 76% in the United States), and technology is recognized for its ability to help individuals overcome creative limitations (58% globally, 60% in the United States) and provide inspiration (53% globally, 62% in the United States).

Other findings, in the workplace:

The study reveals a workplace creativity gap, where 75% of respondents said they are under growing pressure to be productive rather than creative, despite the fact that they are increasingly expected to think creatively on the job. Across all of the countries surveyed, people said they spend only 25% of their time at work creating. Lack of time is seen as the biggest barrier to creativity (47% globally, 52% in United States).

In schools:

More than half of those surveyed feel that creativity is being stifled by their education systems, and many believe creativity is taken for granted (52% globally, 70% in the United States).

In the United States:

The United States ranked globally as the second most creative nation [after Japan] among the countries surveyed, except in the eyes of Americans, who see themselves as the most creative. Yet Americans also expressed the greatest sense of urgency and concern that they are not living up to their creative potential (United States at 82%, vs. the lowest level of concern in Germany at 64%).